Guess the Dipped Goblins - And win a fully painted Battle for Skull Pass

A small contest: can you guess which, and how many, of these six minis have been dipped, and which haven't? Guess right and there's something in it for you (see end of article).

As you may have just realized, we're now offering dipped miniature painting, which come in at half the cost of our standard painting rates. Painting starts as low as 99 cents per figure. You can check out our dipped pricing here on our prices page: http://www.paintedfigs.com/prices.html

One of our clients asked us to look into dipping as a way of offering painted Wargames Factory historicals at low rates. Assemble, basecoat, dip in Army Painter or Minwax, treat with matte varnish, and voila. In our search for the 99 cent Roman, we found first that we could do night goblins, gretchin and gnoblars for 99 cents, and most other infantry for $1.65.  

Compare and Contrast: Dipped gobbos vs. Standard gobbos

You can see the results of our dipping tests here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/paintedfigs/NightGoblinsComparedDippedVsStandardQuality#

This is a gallery of night goblins comparing dipped (no grass on their bases) with standard paint job night goblins (grass on their bases). Here are some standard quality chaps:

Now here are some dipped night goblins:

Now here is a close up. This shows two dipped goblins on the left, and two standard quality goblins on the right:

Once we add grass to them, I will not be able to tell them apart without checking quite closely, which works fine for me. Now please note, these are just night goblins. Results are going to vary based on the figures and the paint jobs, but we can safely say that while they won't have the polish or standard or showcase quality work, they'll still come together quite nicely as far as dipping results go. 

Tac Marines for just over Retail: A Games Workshop Example

When you combine this with buying miniatures through us at wholesale rates, this can make for quite the saving. A box of ten tactical marines that retails for $35, we can buy, custom assemble, and dip paint, ALL for $39.25 . That's an extra $4.25, plus shipping. 

Metal Minis: Fully Painted and Cheaper than Retail

It gets more insane when you look at miniatures by companies that do mostly metal. Warcaster Dawnlord Vyros from the new Retribution line for Warmachine, costs $14.99 at retail. At standard painting rates we can offer him, model and paint job combined, for $15.20. With dipping, we can offer him painted for $11.35 -- cheaper than retail.  

There's a lot we'd like to do with dipping (prepainted historicals, shopping cart convenience for stock painting scheme warmachine orders), but we're starting just with extending it as a normal, commission-based painting service for Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy first. 

Have you guessed exactly which (and how many) minis in the first picture are dipped and which are undipped? If you've figured it out, email me at navin@paintedfigs.com, and put "Skull Pass Dipped Challenge" in the email title. One correct winner, selected at random, will receive the goblin part of the Battle for Skull Pass, fully painted and in his mail box. 

The reaction from our clients who were informed about it last week has been quite positive, and we're proud to be able to offer this highly affordable solution to the community. 

Navin

Visit from the Sunday Times to Paintedfigs.com

I've always felt Paintedfigs.com made for a good human interest feature story, especially in Sri Lanka where there is so little exposure to the larger world of gaming, let alone miniatures (they do video and PC, but everything else is unheard of except for Risk which everyone owns but no one ever plays). It has all the hallmarks: oddity, quirkiness, pretty visuals, human interest. I even pitched the story to one magazine, but they didn't seem to think it was something worth writing about (they also went out of business a couple of years ago, so look who's laughing now, eh? EH?). 

The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka is quite an old paper out here, and has a strong leisure and human interest following. My friend Smriti Daniel (who got me to do some writing for a children's zine she edits) it turned out also writes for the Times, and she set up an interview with us over the weekend. 


What is wargaming? Why did you pick it? How long have you been a gamer for? Where do your staff come from? Had they ever seen anything like this before? Who buys these? She asked a good range of questions, perhaps with a slant towards doing a story focused on a person (me!) rather than miniature painting or the industry of miniature painting in general (not that I'm complaining). 


The end of the interview caught me off guard: Pushpa the photographer took a great many pictures of me with miniatures -- I guess I know a playboy model feels - just with minis. And pants. They also insisted I couldn't make ridiculous faces, and its hard for me to make a normal face when a picture is being taken (check me out on facebook -- there's almost no images where I'm not trying to look like a five year old).  


 I think there is good scope for a general story of Asian miniature painting, from Sri Lanka to Hong Kong, where it's a very real business creating full time employment. You've got Sanath Fernando only half an hours' drive from me who started full time professional miniature painting in the first place (last I heard he had 80 painters), newer companies like Reinforcements by Post (Bangladesh) and DJD Minis (Thailand), and then late entrants like us specializing in fantasy. 


Us being covered in the local media doesn't really touch a lot of people interested in miniatures or painting, but it is nice for the staff to be able to show the article to friends and such and be asked about it at parties. Further, it might help build interest in our fledgling gaming community out here. 


You can see more pictures of their visit on our facebook page here. We'll be updating this gallery with the pics of the article and link to it online. 


Navin

Paintedfigs.com Army Scores 38/40 for Appearance in AWC Approved Tournament Tracker event

Matt Baugh, proud owner of the very first space marine army we painted, received 38/40 at last weekend's AWC Approved Tournament Tracker tournament. This was not a joint second place as reported earlier, but a joint sixth place.

"I was very pleased to score 38 out of 40 for appearance," said Matt to me later. "At a painting cost of $2.50 per space marine, 38 out of 40 is something I would never have dreamed of when I sent those off to you for painting."

This made me happy to no end -- the first reported, impartial assessement of one of our armies in a tournament setting. This wasn't a tournament series I was familiar with, so I asked my partner Luke what the scale of this event was, and how much our score really meant.

"Let me put it this way," he began bluntly, "we're in the same league as Brian Carlson, who won six Best Appearances and Players Choice Awards in the last year. We were just two points behind the winner, Tom Ortman, who won the 2005 Tracker Season overall. "

"This event was significant Navin," he continued. "Half of the participants were either Adepticon award winners of some sort or arganizers and judges at Adepticon."

We since learned from the tourney organizers and participants that even though the raw scores would suggest this, given that so many people tied for first place it is a little meaningless to try draw any kind of assessment on painting quality based on the 38/40.

So has our painting come a long way? I think it has (just take a look at our more recent work like our 100+ model dwarf slayer army) , but high appearance scores may not be indicative of quality (we got an A+ on test -- but since so many others did it doesn't have any real value).

Still, rocognition is recognition, and its good to know that our very first, table top quality, space marine army was quite tournament worthy. It's been an achievement not just for my painters, but also for our clients who have been loyally spreading the word about us to their friends, our quality, and our low pricing.

From myself and the painters, thank you for everything.

Navin

Painted Anime - Paintedfigs does Singapore

I went to Singapore last week, officially to kick back and relax for a change. I did too, it was the first time in nine months that I didn't check email.

Singapore is an awesome city -- and yes, it is one big city state. It's clean, modern, prosperous, and full of high end electronics that are fantastically cheap since they're manufactured there :) . Singaporeans are great people, interesting, hard working, and highly motivated.



Sadly, Singapore is a pretty awful if you're Singaporean. You are likely paid less for the same work than expats with the same qualifications (a problem in Sri Lanka as well). Demonstrating gets you jailed for 25 years. There is no secret ballot, and the media is censored.

But Singaporeans carry on. Many understand that though they don't care for it, the quasi-totalitarian regime of Lee Kuan Yew has done a lot to create their success. Others simply cross their fingers and wait for Lee to die of old age.


Of Robin Low and Jacob Pang
Robin is a good friend of mine from Boston. We were at Harvard together, and I help him with PR for his own company, Greenyarn.com, a nanotech startup that sells self-deodorizing and anti-bacterial clothing.

Jacob, originally from Hong Kong, is one of Robin's lads and pretty cool guy. He has his own shipping company Dartwin.com, and he's been doing sales for Greenyarn in China and Singapore for a while now. Jacob used to sell transformer kits, and he's familiar with the anime market.


The Anime Model Market
It was while shopping for GW supplies that we noticed the possibilities of the anime market. We found shop after shop selling plastic anime chicks, gundam model kits, and geshaphon. Jacob and Robin saw the potential well before I did, and did a good job of convincing me.

The next day we started laying down the ground work. Jacob is sending us some Gundam model kits soon so we can assemble and paint them as samples. Once we have something presentable, we'll put some in stores in Singapore and see how they move.

Then?

Then we cross our fingers. If all goes well, we sit down and figure out how to flood the market.


Meeting Up With Stephen Sing Stephen Sing has been one of our earliest clients. He came us to back when were just me and two painters -- and now that we've more than tripled in size, he's STILL drumming his fingers waiting for us to get him his poor minis...

I didn't get to spend as much time meeting with him as I'd like to have -- what should have been a casual hang out became, as usual, a business meeting. First I talked briefly with some of the guys at Paradigm Infinitum, Stephen's game store, and the I hung out with his friend Edward who gave me a lot of useful information on everything from drybrushes to stripping paint with Dettol.









Overall
Overall it was a great trip. You might say it was too short, but if I stayed any longer it would have hurt work in the studio. Its interesting -- if not for the abundant public holidays in Sri Lanka that mean we have to shut the studio, I'd never take any breaks at all!

The funny thing is, visiting Singapore felt like going home. A big, modern, multicultural city with all kinds of people - even the beer tasted right. For the first time, I found myself wondering whether I'd rather stay in Asia than go back to the US.

I talked to Robin about it, and he had the perfect answer, "the US is where my customers are, I have to be in the US."

If painted anime takes off -- who knows?

And its back to work....

I hope you've had a good Sri Lankan New Year / Easter. Between visiting relatives and stuffing my face with goodies, I did manage to get some work done though. The get-stuff-done prize though go es to Luke. Let me tell you what he's been up to...


Jungle Terrain
It struck us that there is probably a market out there for affordable jungle terrain. Not many fancy paying $50 for a bundle of aquarium plants -- but would they pay $20 for enough to cover the terrain needs for an 8x4 table? $20 for re-assembled and painted plants?

The idea is Luke's and he's talked to a couple of stores that are interested in seeing what we can offer. I managed to pick up a small forest of aquarium plants before all the shops closed for the holday week, and next week I hope to have some pics up of some "test" plants.

Can we actually manage all that for just $20 for a whole table? I dunno... $50 for a whole table might be a better figure -- but then agin, I don't know yet. We'll have to make some prototypes, see how long the process takes, and hope we can make this so affordable that its a real solution to jungle gaming needs.

You'd think I'd be all about catachans, nids, and lizardmen storming over a leafy table, but actually, I'd more keen to on the pulp wargame possibilities. Eureka minis makes some pretty goofy pygmies and Pulp Figures (http://www.pulpfigures.com) has everything from Geman zeppelin troopers to the US Rocket Corps - not to mention a fantastic (and free) rule system that is pretty much immune to the killjoy of over-competitive gaming (it recommends that players wear funny hats, cause no one can take a rules lawyer seriously if he's got a fez on).




Prepainted Minis?
There's buzz about this here and there. thewarstore.com is very keen on doing it, and I wish them luck. The problem though is that its unlikely that any patnership between a manufacturer and a painting service will be able to lead to 28mm, high quality, pre-painted miniatures, at pricing competitive with unpainted miniatures. Hero Clix is a step in the right direction, but its the casette tape stage of this product, when what we need is the re-writable DVD stage.






So here's the holy grail: Is is possible to manufacture and fully paint minis, and sell them to stores at prices low enough that they'll be competitive with unpainted minis, right there on the shelves? Can a company that can integrate both manufacturing and painting, manage this?

We put together a spreadsheet and ran some numbers. What we came up with was encouraging enough to results for me to say on this blog that we are now aiming:




- To manufacture and fully paint, "troop choice" infantry 28mm minis
- To have these minis match GW's sculpting quality
- Sell these to stores at the $3.50 a figure, at 40% off the retail price


As of all of Luke's networking efforts last week, we may very well be able to hit all three. In the long run, I think it not unreasonable to think that we could hit all three.

There are lot of directions we could go if we can manage that. Right now, a rather talented sculptor is working on some great coat infantry, complete with gas masks, spiked helmets, and long rifles. It seems a good market tester: GW Guard players may like some Steel Legion style variants to use as proxies, and pulp-players may quite like them.





Prepainted Bases
Not as earth shattering as prepainted minis, but an easy baby step. We're looking at selling them for $1 per base, and before we can go any further we need to test the market and see if people are interested in this product.

Generally
Things are looking up. I'm probably going to hire another painter next week -- I'm usually quite cautious about staffing levels, but we've got a staggering amount of work to get through and I'm adding 2-3 new clients a week now. One of the reasons I'm keen to work on our own terrain, minis, and bases is that it allows me to have higher staffing to do custom painting, and in quiet periods (of which we've had none) we can manufacture our own products.

Just recieved a shipment from Luke, which among other things, has a laser pointer in it. This will really help cut down on the arguments at games. The lads enjoy wargaming, but their sportsmanship scores could stand to rise...

Take care,

Navin

Happy New Year!

Greetings!

We will be on vacation from the the 11th to the 17th for the Sri Lankan New Year.

I'll be fairly available during this period though, to handle email correspondences.

Take care, and best wishes for the New Year,

Navin

Lucas Como Joins Paintedfigs.com

Lucas Como, who's Adepticon team's army appeared in US White Dwarf 311, has joined us as head of our US operation.

A little about Luke. He is the captain of Team BLOID, an Adepticon Team that won Best Appearance in 2005, is gunning very hard for 2006. He's known for taking appearance seriously: he presented an army list once made of stained glass, and he started the tradition of building display bases. This summer he will be appearance judging at various tournaments throughout the US. These pictures you see are unpublished images of Team BLOID's WD 311 army.



Luke is also a good friend who's been with us since we went live back in August '05. He's helped guide us up from a one-man show, to the 6 full time us staff we have today -- and adding about a painter a month now. He's mentored our quality up to what it is today, and has been my pulse on US wargaming since I left. We touch base almost daily.






A US Office
Luke now runs our little shipping hub in the US. We found that the USPS would not insure or register packages to Sri Lanka weighing more than a pound, unless it came by express mail. This is more expensive -- unless quite a large package is being sent. It becomes EVEN cheaper if that large package is a shared shipment covering several clients' minis -- so cheap that we're talking registered packages that get to us within a week, at less than regular shipping rates.

An added benefit, is that anyone shipping through the US hub doens't need to do any customs paperwork. We handle all that ourselves. All someone in the US needs to do to send us minis, is mail them to:

Luke Como
c/o Johnson and Assoc

1210 Towanda Ave #12

Bloomington IL 61701

And we'll handle the rest :) .

TANKS PAINTED BY JOE ADAMS, Team BLOID 2005

We're Growing...

Greetings. Welcome to international business for the little guy.

Right now I am waiting for 2am my time, to call over a retailer in the UK to cancel an overdue order of French miniatures I had made for a client in Singapore. Meanwhile, I am shopping for paints from a store in Australia because its toolate for my US partner to get them in the next scheduled shipment. To tide themselves over, my painters are using the high end Vallejo Game Colors from Spain till the new GW lot comes in. It is at this moment that I realize I need to do my taxes. Uncle Sam's state and federal kind.


We're Growing
Business keeps on growing. I hired two new full time painters this month. The first one, Indika, just painted the nicest genestealer I've ever seen. We did it for $2, but the real satisfaction is in knowing how much more it's worth back to the UK. Indika plays Middenheimers in our shop Mordheim League, and sent my cousin's Possessed warband packing last week. The other new lad starts tomorrow.

It's very busy these days. Clients are placing repeat orders almost immediately. Sample orders are coming in now daily. At the end of each day we sit around like generals, planning the targets for the next day's painting, studying quality control numbers, tracking deadlines. We talk about what painting methods are being taught next, and what our feedback from clients has been.

The Value of Being a Professional Outfit
Things are definitely more complicated than they used to be. Each night, we plan out who we can put on what job - optimizing on skills and time. I've got the lads doing 4-sigma quality control, which is fantastically effective once they know what I'm looking for with a product. Everyone has a different set of responsibilities. Upul tracks brushes. Gayan tracks paint levels. Indika fixes all the rubbish from China we're saddled with (he tells me he does not get why we use the world's best modelling supplies, but the world's cheapest lights. I tell him its because when a lamp out here costs a dollar, once we have to throw away ten lamps to find one that works, I'll buy something made in Japan instead. So far, I'm winning -- but not by much).

The Value of Having Fun
We all work pretty hard, but we have a lot of fun too. Wednesday night is Mordheim night, and my Marienburger archers consistently get their asses handed to them. On one level its all fun and games, but on another its vital training: my painters understand their clients and care more about the work they do because they themselves have become wargamers One is making an 'Eavy Metal grade unit of Khorne Berserker conversions. Another is busy turning his Defiler's base into a diorama.




The Future
Will I get anywhere with this? Statistics says a resounding no. 9 out of 10 startups goes on to fail quit miserably, and this is my first business. So far though -- we've ridden out all kinds of mishaps and have 100% happy customers. If we can keep that up, well, that's all that really matters now, doesn't it?

Looking forward to a strong 2006,

Navin
Da Boss, Paintedfigs.com

Holiday Season, South Asian Style!

Christmas is much lower key in Sri Lanka than it is in the US or UK. The population is mostly buddhist, but everyone likes a holiday. We went out of town yesterday to attend a ten year anniversary of my Dad's hotel -- Theravada Buddhist style.

There are two kinds of successful people in Sri Lanka. The first kind lives large and flaunts that they made it. The other kind -- well, they have nothing to prove. Saman Villas, the country's number one luxury hotel, is run by this former sort. How did they mark their tenth anniversary? With a half hour religious ceremony that not even the guests knew about.

A Dane
A Dane (pronounced THA-nay) is sevice where buddhist monks gather to repeat sermons first delivered by the Buddha. They are an oral tradition going back 2,500 years. The chanting of these sermons is called pirith, and is typically about kindness towards all.

The Dane started with the priests being fed. In case you're wondering, buddhist priests are vegetarians (as all buddhists are supposed to be. As you may guess, we have our C&E sorts too...). This is the only "payment" these priests receive for this service.




After the priests have eaten, everyone who will listen to the pirith sits in front of the priests on the ground. A spool of string (made from a leaf) is passed amongst the gathered, and everyone holds on to the string (you'll see what this is for later).




After the pirith is over, a cup of water is poured. This is done because buddhists believe reciting pirith generates merits, which can be passed on to the dead. This is to aid in their reincarnation into better lives.









Here you see what happens to the string. It is cut into sections and each of the attendees has it tied around their right wrist. This is their badge of piety.

These are supposed to be worn for several days. My Dad likes to wear them till they fall off.





And that's pretty much it!
While we're on a buddhist kick, I'm jump ahead to the end of the day. We joined the managing director on a trip to a nearby temple that the hotel is going to do some community work for (repairs and new construction). The temple was on a small hill that was the highest point in the area, so Dad and I went on a little hike.

Unsurprisingly, the summit was swarming with jungle growth and we couldn't see a thing. This pic is the last interesting thing before the summit.



I ran the image today in a negative filter, and it looked pretty Cthulhoid :) .

The steps were pretty treacherous, but the lack of a handrail just made the climb more awesome.














Monks in training.















I was very happy to get this shot of a monk ascending.

















Afterwards, I just hung out with my kid cousins and ate like a pig. These are shots of Saman Villas, one of the most relaxing places I've ever been.

































These are my kid cousins. The older one, Shalin, is nine, the younger one, Dulin, is three. This was Dulin's first time swimming. Both would much rather paint (or maybe I should say "paint") than wargame.

The equally amused and outraged looking gentleman with Dulin is my Dad, Sugath Weeraratne. That's Mr Sugath Weeraratne to you...

We're Sponsoring Adepticon!

I am proud to announce that we'll be providing some of the prize support for Adepticon '06.

The Best General players of the 40K Team tournament, and the 40k Championship Best General will be receiving our "Adepticon Warmaster" Certificates. These will entitle them to:

Ten character miniatures professionally painted for you by Asia's best 28mm craftsmen. Elephants, shipping, and dancing girls, not included.

Originally we had hoped to be the "official painting service" of Adepticon, but since Adepticon isn't actually getting anything painted by us, it made more sense go to for "Proud Painting Service Sponsor."

Jeff Chua is the fellow in charge of Adepticon I believe, and he seems a pretty level, approachable guy. You can visit Adepticon's site here.

And now, a picture of me relaxing a weekend ago at my Dad's hote, Saman Villas (I'm reading Kurzweil's "Spiritual Machines"). They're having their tenth anniversary on the 23rd, so we're probably not working on Friday.

I don't know about you guys, but when you work Saturdays and often Sundays, you take days off wherever you can...

Navin

Painting Prices Seem to be Falling...

Tom Petty once said he knew he had made it when he saw posters advertising tickets for a bogus Tom Petty concert. I know we're a good way and certainly a lot of work away from "made it" status, but I think I know how Tom felt when I read things like this (from Bartertown.com):

" ... We also changed the pricing structure to be a bit more competitive ... Remember we are not Farming out the work to someone overseas, your money will be spent here in the US on cheap crap from China. "

The way I see it, there's hobbyists who paint minis for the love of the hobby and for extra cash to buy more minis, and there's people who paint minis to pay bills and taxes. I know there are more than a few of the latter out here in Asia.

Here are some pics of an enginseer I painted recently for a friend. This is at what I call our character quality, which is $5 a 28mm figure.















You can see a the full gallery here.